Getting better sensor uniformity would be one important thing to me, reducing colour aberrations.[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=207302\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

For the work I do, medium format really needs to write some presets or change their color response.

All of digital is somewhat flaky compared to film in the way it picks up ambient color and all of digital is so tilted towards holding the highlights and shadows even the dslrs look somewhat flat, but this (and I'm not a color scientist) makes for a lot of color contamination (or better put it digital sees everything and the medium format backs see too much for what I do).

Film was different in the fact it was kind of dumb, it didn't seem to see everything. With film I was always adding fill and with digital I would rather start in black and work my way to white.

The medium format files are the most problematic. When they are on they are completely amazing and if your working with controlled lighting under the conditions they seem to be designed for they hold detail, highlights, shadows like no dslr can, but when you are working with mixed lighting, like sunlight and hmi fill, or your working with very hard direct light in studio, they cast and require a lot of post work to get skin colors to the look you remembered in film.

Little things like high key, extreme low key and back light going to flare seem to make digital go crazy.

I assume that whoever writes the software/firmware/grey balances . . . whatever, is shooting color charts and vegtables but they really need to shoot under a lot of conditions and skin tones in almost every kind of light.

Last night I was putting together some pre production materials for a project and went onto the servers and pulled down images from the 1ds1, 1ds2, A-22, p30 and p30+.

Some were amazingly on, others were almost impossible to get that great skin color without working in photoshop. Once again when the medium format was ON it was amazing, but when off it requires selecting and almost painting the skin.

The most uniform of all the cameras was the original 1ds1. It had it's issues, but is was the most consistent.

As far as 60mpx, well that's up to whoever buys it. Personally I think it's just easier and sound bites better to claim more megapixels than it does to mention stable software, or show beautiful skin tone color, but these companies will do what they want and I guess there is value in bigger is better.

Regardless, why none of these companies have not hired some kid out of Art Center, send him on a week long shoot of 5 skin tones, all types of lighting, clothes and locations and had him shoot their digital backs, next to film and compared the results is beyond me.

Just adding that we have diminishing returns. Going from 11 MPixels to 22 the amount of information is doubled, so we can make 40% larger prints. Going from 39 to 50 Mpixels we have a 20% improvement, so we can make 10% larger prints. Do we have a visible difference? Probably not. If we can see an improvement it is probably more related to improved sensor design and improved signal processing.

Best regardsErik

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For the work I do, medium format really needs to write some presets or change their color response.

All of digital is somewhat flaky compared to film in the way it picks up ambient color and all of digital is so tilted towards holding the highlights and shadows even the dslrs look somewhat flat, but this (and I'm not a color scientist) makes for a lot of color contamination (or better put it digital sees everything and the medium format backs see too much for what I do).

Film was different in the fact it was kind of dumb, it didn't seem to see everything. With film I was always adding fill and with digital I would rather start in black and work my way to white.

The medium format files are the most problematic. When they are on they are completely amazing and if your working with controlled lighting under the conditions they seem to be designed for they hold detail, highlights, shadows like no dslr can, but when you are working with mixed lighting, like sunlight and hmi fill, or your working with very hard direct light in studio, they cast and require a lot of post work to get skin colors to the look you remembered in film.

Little things like high key, extreme low key and back light going to flare seem to make digital go crazy.

I assume that whoever writes the software/firmware/grey balances . . . whatever, is shooting color charts and vegtables but they really need to shoot under a lot of conditions and skin tones in almost every kind of light.

Last night I was putting together some pre production materials for a project and went onto the servers and pulled down images from the 1ds1, 1ds2, A-22, p30 and p30+.

Some were amazingly on, others were almost impossible to get that great skin color without working in photoshop. Once again when the medium format was ON it was amazing, but when off it requires selecting and almost painting the skin.

The most uniform of all the cameras was the original 1ds1. It had it's issues, but is was the most consistent.

As far as 60mpx, well that's up to whoever buys it. Personally I think it's just easier and sound bites better to claim more megapixels than it does to mention stable software, or show beautiful skin tone color, but these companies will do what they want and I guess there is value in bigger is better.

Regardless, why none of these companies have not hired some kid out of Art Center, send him on a week long shoot of 5 skin tones, all types of lighting, clothes and locations and had him shoot their digital backs, next to film and compared the results is beyond me.JR[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=207315\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

The most uniform of all the cameras was the original 1ds1. It had it's issues, but is was the most consistent.

Well, you are right about that, for sure. The DSLR's have the advantage of a much smaller sensor to get right.

What I was referring to was the way that at least the Dalsa MF sensors are 'printed' in sections. As a result, the chips surface is divided into a number of rectangles that appear to have slightly different characteristics. As a result, with non-retrofocal lenses you can get patches of greenish or magenta hue distributed over the picture. This is then overlaid by subtle 'italian flag' colour shifts, particularly with wide angles which are shifted.

Lets hope that the chippers manage to improve on the production process.

Only Dalsa has to reveal their hand now, presumably they have something in the works too.

Personally I think it's just easier and sound bites better to claim more megapixels than it does to mention stable software....JR[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=207315\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Amen to that.

As someone who cannot get ACR4 to save out TIFFs (Hasselblad 223Mb files that were first processed in Flexcolor) without constantly getting the dreaded, "There was not enough memory......" error, I can totally agree with you. I'm running Vista 64bit/8Gb RAM and one of the fastest processors available and I still get the error.

As has been suggested, landscapers might like this, but no one else needs it, IMHO.

As someone who cannot get ACR4 to save out TIFFs (Hasselblad 223Mb files that were first processed in Flexcolor) without constantly getting the dreaded, "There was not enough memory......" error, I can totally agree with you. I'm running Vista 64bit/8Gb RAM and one of the fastest processors available and I still get the error.

I think you must have something wrong in your Photoshop setup. I'm converting my P45+ files to 16-bit TIFFs (same file size as what you're working with) on a Mac Pro with 4 Gbytes of RAM and I've never seen the out of memory message. In fact, I'm stiching up to five 8-bit TIFFs (total open image size of almost 600 Mbytes, with no memory problems.

I wrote some software to calibrate a back, and did some testing around January. The difference in mixed light is incredible with my P45+. But raw converters cannot pick up the calibration info at the moment. My Matlab code is not exactly suitable for end-users like James It's possible that we could get a hacked version of dcraw to do what we need for the general public, but at the moment the only suitable version I know of is in the hands of Xrite and they have IP issues releasing it.

I proposed to the ICC DP working group that we have templates to drop the calibration info the files so that all Raw converters can see it. There is now on the agenda for the ICC Portland meeting in the fall a vote, that a request may be made via our liaisons to the TIFF/EP and DNG committees to incorporate the requested mods to their standards, at which point in a year or so things might improve for end users.

I will try to get out some end-user software myself later this year, I have some work to finish first before the Portland meeting.

Edmund

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The medium format files are the most problematic. When they are on they are completely amazing and if your working with controlled lighting under the conditions they seem to be designed for they hold detail, highlights, shadows like no dslr can, but when you are working with mixed lighting, like sunlight and hmi fill, or your working with very hard direct light in studio, they cast and require a lot of post work to get skin colors to the look you remembered in film.

Regardless, why none of these companies have not hired some kid out of Art Center, send him on a week long shoot of 5 skin tones, all types of lighting, clothes and locations and had him shoot their digital backs, next to film and compared the results is beyond me.JR[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=207315\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

if thats really the best price you can get, you guys should come over here to the US and get one for the same price in $ and save oh, about 10,000 Euros...[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=207290\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

If you do that though, Phase in EU won't want to know you. So hope you don't need support, or that it can be resolved by phone, at mutually convenient times. Phase have been quite offensive to me on this matter!

I think you must have something wrong in your Photoshop setup. I'm converting my P45+ files to 16-bit TIFFs (same file size as what you're working with) on a Mac Pro with 4 Gbytes of RAM and I've never seen the out of memory message. In fact, I'm stiching up to five 8-bit TIFFs (total open image size of almost 600 Mbytes, with no memory problems.[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=207328\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Interesting Mort,

I recently shifted back to OS X from XP64, because I was getting the same error with stitches of even 3 extracted P45 files (ca 200-230Mb each).

As someone who cannot get ACR4 to save out TIFFs (Hasselblad 223Mb files that were first processed in Flexcolor) without constantly getting the dreaded, "There was not enough memory......" error, I can totally agree with you. I'm running Vista 64bit/8Gb RAM and one of the fastest processors available and I still get the error.

As has been suggested, landscapers might like this, but no one else needs it, IMHO.

D.[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=207326\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

There is a lot of things that medium format does that is good. Tethering, detail, lack of an aa filter, the format for vertical pages and some of them have open files and stable software.

Then again there is no buzz in talking about stability or batch processing, but double the size, double the area, that's an easy one to advertise.

Most of the people I knwo that have shot digital for a period have gone through a lot of stages, from the first stage of yippeee it's finally as good as film, to the final responses when you just kind of shake your head and go on with life.

I don't know what any of these new annoucements mean, other than bigger files and for some the ability to print over a wall, but for most of us that work with these cameras under pressure, there is a whole lot of things we'd like to see addressed before the file sizes grow.

Then again, I've already pruchased and I'm probably not the exact target market.

I know the camera companies want to move product and from the dslrs to the smaller medium format companies, they are more predisposed to listen to good replies to what they offer, vs. non positive replies, (I guess that means negative).

We all want that in life, but then again if everyone keeps telling us we're great, we have little incentive to get better.

I'm curious as how these new cameras will be received. Will they be the must have addition, or just a variation on a current theme?

I don't sell cameras so I don't know, but I am positive once they hit the streets the process and the buzz (good and bad) will start all over again.

Because "The Kodak 22mp (KAF22000) sensor was developed something like 5 years ago", could we see a new generation of 9 microns 22MP (or 30MP) CDD (for those thinking it is enough) ?[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=207307\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Pretty unlikely .....

During Hasselblads conference call this week we were told that Kodak has discontinued the 22mp chip and stock is only what is on hand ...

So I would soon expect to see just about everyone's 22mp offerings fade into history with the possible exception of Leaf since they are the only back manufacturer to use the Dalsa chip in the 22mp offering.

go multi layers, do something with different plugin filters, sooner or later you'll encounter this(200m+ original files)

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I think you must have something wrong in your Photoshop setup. I'm converting my P45+ files to 16-bit TIFFs (same file size as what you're working with) on a Mac Pro with 4 Gbytes of RAM and I've never seen the out of memory message. In fact, I'm stiching up to five 8-bit TIFFs (total open image size of almost 600 Mbytes, with no memory problems.[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=207328\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Somebody, in this or some other thread asked a very good question: "What do the product managers listen to when they come up with these products" (approximate quote). I am in the same camp of people that say 60mp is too much for most people, but could it be that the major MFDB companies are listening to what the clients want? Have any of you received a survey about what you would like to see?

go multi layers, do something with different plugin filters, sooner or later you'll encounter this(200m+ original files)[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=207363\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

No. It is definitely something wrong with the setup or hardware to get memory problems.On my Powerbook G4 with 2Gig of RAM, I made the texture file that was printed onto vinyl and applied to the Honda F1 Car last year... ("Earthdreams" world map).That was the biggest file I have ever worked on... approx 16 Gigabyte photoshop file with dozens of layers printed at 300ppi all over the car.Yes it was slow to work with but I didn't ever get a memory problem.The secret was a firewire Raid Disk attached to the laptop as the photoshop scratch disk.So believe me... a piddley little 200Mb file should never cause a problem.All the bestAndrew

During Hasselblads conference call this week we were told that Kodak has discontinued the 22mp chip and stock is only what is on hand ...

So I would soon expect to see just about everyone's 22mp offerings fade into history with the possible exception of Leaf since they are the only back manufacturer to use the Dalsa chip in the 22mp offering.

I'm in the "60Mp? No thanks" camp myself. However, if you could choose to shoot at lower resolution with faster speed AND get very clean 1600 iso @ 30Mb I would consider upgrading in the future. But like many have said before me, my P25 still blows me away every time I use it so I feel no rush whatsoever.

not total 200mb, but each layer 200mb, and I easily end up with 30-50layers, see attached file for example...I'm not a hardware or software expert, so I really don't know which is the problem. well I guess it's the plugins, coz everytime I run out of memory I'm trying to do something with the plugins. Good info of your scratch disk secret:) I'll try that.

cheers,dustblue

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No. It is definitely something wrong with the setup or hardware to get memory problems.On my Powerbook G4 with 2Gig of RAM, I made the texture file that was printed onto vinyl and applied to the Honda F1 Car last year... ("Earthdreams" world map).That was the biggest file I have ever worked on... approx 16 Gigabyte photoshop file with dozens of layers printed at 300ppi all over the car.Yes it was slow to work with but I didn't ever get a memory problem.The secret was a firewire Raid Disk attached to the laptop as the photoshop scratch disk.So believe me... a piddley little 200Mb file should never cause a problem.All the bestAndrew[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=207384\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]